


Cecee and the Angel of the First Star to the Right and Straight on Until Morning

by fresne



Category: Original Work
Genre: 42, Angels, Dante - Freeform, Dante Aligheri - Freeform, Gen, Happy Birthday, Paradisio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 12:30:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/953120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecee was not sleepy, which was good because if she had been asleep, she would have missed her chance to go flying with the angels in the stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cecee and the Angel of the First Star to the Right and Straight on Until Morning

**Author's Note:**

> Written for one of my oldest friends on the occasion of turning the age that is the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Cecee looked out the window of her room. She was supposed to be sleeping. 

Her brothers were all asleep in their room across the hall. She could hear them snoring. Ferin's khaaaa-cuu, and Colin's gnaaaaa-knu.

Her sisters were all asleep. She could see Lelu wrapt up around her Teddy dreaming of roaming the under forest in the realms of the night. She couldn't really see Mina from where Mina was buried under her covers enfolded so tight, as if she was a bear in a cave with the only the tip of her nose peeking out.

Cecee should have been asleep. She was supposed to be sleeping. Her parents thought she was sleeping. She could hear her parents downstairs getting ready for bed. 

Cecee was not tired. 

She hadn't been tired when she'd brushed her teeth and she hadn't been tired when she'd gotten her glass of water. She hadn't even been tired when her Mama told them the story about the dancing bears in the under forests of the night. 

Oh, she'd pretended. 

It made Mama feel better to think she was sleepy. So, Cecee'd yawned and she'd stretched and she'd closed her eyes with a smile. But when Mama turned the light out and left the door open a crack, Cecee had been awake enough to wait. She knew her Mama's ways. She waited until both Mama and Papa had checked one last time before going downstairs. 

When the coast was clear, Cecee'd crept to the window, which was open onto the night above full of little points of light in the blackest black sky. She'd looked out and hoped and wished and prayed that she could go swimming in the stars. 

As she was watching, she saw an angel shoot across the sky. Now, it may have looked like a falling star, but it wasn't. It was an angel who landed with a thump, rump, bump on Cecee's roof. 

Her Mama didn't hear it and her Papa didn't hear it. They didn't come back up the stairs. Mina disappeared further under her covers and Lelu gripped Teddy tight. Ferin kept going, "khaaaaa-cuu" and Colin kept snoring out, "gnaaaa-knu."

Cecee climbed out her window sill and climbed up the morning glory trellis along the wall. She climbed up it like an explorer, except she'd made this climb a hundred-hundred-hundred times before. That meant that she wasn't really exploring at all.

On the roof, she saw the angel. 

Now, Cecee had seen lots of pictures and statues of angels at church. 

This angel looked nothing like any of them. It had a hundred-hundred-hundred wings that were all bright red and blue and green. It had the head of a lion and the head of an ox and the head of something she didn't know what it was and the head of an eagle. 

Still, she knew an angel when she saw one. 

Cecee knew that her Mama would want her to be polite, so she said, "Hello. What's your name? My name is Cecee."

The angel said, "I am Dextrariel. I am the angel of the first star to the right and straight on until morning." The angel's eagle head moved some feathers back into place. All four heads sighed. "I fell off the first star to the right." The lion's head whispered. "I wasn't supposed to be jumping quite so much."

Cecee hated it when she fell off. Once she'd knocked all the air out of her chest when she'd fallen off of the trellis and then couldn't tell anybody because she wasn't supposed to be climbing the trellis. "Oh, I'm sorry." She looked up at the little points of light in sky. "But I can see why you'd want to. It's really pretty."

All four heads said, "Yes." The weird head with the tufts of black out its ears said, "Although, you can't see most of the stars from here."

"Really?" Cecee wasn't sure how that could possibly be so. There were tens and tens and tens of stars in the sky. She counted them every night.

"Really," said the ox's head, while the lion's head very softly coughed and the eagle's head said, "there are more stars than there are grains of sand on the beach."

"Oh," said Cecee, who had no idea how many grains of sand there might be on a beach, but it sounded like a lot. The next time they went to the beach, she'd be sure to count them.

Dextrariel flexed wings. The angel spun around gently in place. "I should go back."

"Oh," said Cecee, who was sad to hear that Dextrariel would be going. She'd been enjoying herself on the roof with an angel. 

Dextrariel shuffled a little. "Do you want to come?"

"Oh," said Cecee in a very different tone of voice. "Yes!" She paused, because while she generally found it better not to ask this question, they were talking about flying up into the stars. She said, "Is it okay?"

Dextrariel nodded with all four heads. "Elijah used to come with me in a chariot pulled by firebirds. Deborah would jump off her swing in the old fig tree and fly straight up into the sky."

"Oh," said Cecee in yet a third tone of voice. She didn't take any more convincing. Dextrariel jumped up and Cecee jumped after. 

Now, generally when Cecee jumped on the roof what happened is she landed back on the roof. This time, she kept flying up and up and up and up into the stars, which were a lot closer than her parents had led her believe.

Also, Dextrariel had been right. There were a lot more stars than she'd ever been able to see from her window. There far more stars than she'd ever be able to count.

Soon she was swimming through a great river of milky starlight. It felt warm and soft and tasted exactly like the milk straight out the jug, except a hundred-hundred-hundred times better. She jumped like a fish. "This is wonderful."

"It is," boomed Dextrariel from all four heads. "But it get's better. Follow me." 

Cecee followed Dextrariel up the river of stars, higher and higher. As her eyes got used to the lights from all the stars, she could see other angels. 

Now, none of them looked like that angels that she saw at the pictures in church, but she knew angels when she saw them. She saw red burning serpents with long floating blue beards that spiraled just like Mama's hair. Cecee saw green lions with wide yellow wings and square heads with purple spikes for hair. She saw a lot of angels really. There were a lot of stars and there were a lot of angels. Which made sense, because as she thought about it, there was a lot of sand on the beach.

She swam and she swam until she decided that she'd rather be flying. 

She climbed out of the river of stars and flew through the drier star fields surrounded by puffy cloud angels that crackled and sparked with light.

Dextrariel flew next to her. He pointed out stars that looked like the heads of horses and he pointed out stars that were dancing together.

Cecee swooped and she looped and spread her arms wide and she was about to yell, "Yay," when Dextrariel put a wing over her mouth. 

Dextrariel whispered, "Shhh." Dextrariel pointed with nine wings at a group of stars that made a wide rose of rainbow light. It was the most beautiful rose that Cecee had ever seen. It was the most beautiful thing that Cecee had ever seen.

Cecee flew closer and closer because she wanted to touch pretty petals made of light. To her great embarrassment, she cracked a wide yawn, but she kept flying. She touched a petal and it was as soft as every soft wonderful thing that she'd ever touched. She breathed in and it smelled like every sweet and wonderful thing that Cecee had ever smelled all at once. 

Since Cecee was ever so tired from all the swimming and flying that she'd been doing, she lay down on a wide open petal in the wide open sky and she closed her very tired eyes. She could feel Dextrariel fan her with a hundred-hundred-hundred wings and sing a song that she almost could remember if she weren't so tired.

Now, you might expect that she woke up in her bed, all snuggly and warm, but that wouldn't be the case. 

You might expect that she woke up at her window sill all achy and a bit cold, but that wouldn't be the case.

She woke up when she heard birds singing that it was morning. She woke up slowly on a purple cloud that slowly ever so slowly sank to the lawn of her backyard as the sky got pink and gold and blue. 

Maybe Cecee should have gone right in then. She had breakfast to eat and chores to do and there was school to be gone to, but Cecee went to the swing that her Grandpapa had hung from the wide old gum tree in her backyard. 

She swung and she got good and high. 

She jumped so she could remember what it had felt like to fly.

She went down instead of flying up some more, which was fine. As soon as she landed with her feet on the ground, she ran into her house and her room and all the things she was going to do that day.

She had ever so much to do and it was going to be wonderful.

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


End file.
